Ebola may linger in body and trigger new outbreak

摘要

DEADLY Ebola virus has hit Guinea again and the outbreak appears to have been sparked by a person who was first infected during an epidemic there five years ago. This suggests Ebola can persist in survivors and be a source of future outbreaks. Recent preliminary analyses of viral genome sequences by N'Faly Magassouba at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry in Guinea and his colleagues, along with other research teams, revealed that the virus responsible for the new cases hardly differs from the strain that caused the previous epidemic. This indicates the virus may have lain dormant in someone who caught it in 2016. "This is very surprising and very shocking," says Cesar Munoz-Fontela at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Germany, who was in Guinea during the earlier epidemic. "It's like a relapse."